The present disclosure relates to a fixing device and an image forming apparatus including this fixing device.
An image forming apparatus of an electrographic manner includes a fixing device fixing a toner image on a recording medium, such as a sheet.
Conventionally, the fixing device includes a separating claw separating a recording medium from a fixing member fixing a toner image on the recording medium, and a separating claw moving mechanism moving the separating claw along a surface of the fixing member. Because the separating claw comes into contact with the surface of the fixing member, the surface of the fixing member contacting with the separating claw is scraped over time. The fixing device works while paying attention to moving speed of the separating claw so that the moving speed V of the separating claw satisfies 1×10{circumflex over ( )}−3 mm/s≤V≤0.1 mm/s, and thereby, a scraped amount of the surface of the fixing member is restrained.
Because the above-mentioned separating claw of the fixing device reciprocates without stopping both ends of a moving range, contact time of the separating claw with the fixing member becomes long at a center portion of the moving range in comparison with both end portions of the moving range. As a result, there are problems that a portion of the surface of the fixing member corresponding to the center portion of the moving range of the separating claw is convergently scraped and lifetime of the fixing member is shortened.